


If You're Happy, I'm Happy

by unfolded73



Series: S6 Reaction Fics [1]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Queer Relationship, Gen, In-Laws, M/M, Missing Scene, background Johnny/Moira
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 08:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Follows immediately from the end of 6x01: Smoke Signals. Patrick and Moira talk. Spoilers for 6x01.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: S6 Reaction Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1603735
Comments: 30
Kudos: 268





	If You're Happy, I'm Happy

Moira Rose had been shooting him regretful glances throughout the barbecue, and it made Patrick nervous. After _Cabaret_ , he felt like he knew David’s mother fairly well, and she’d never looked at him like that before, not with anything approaching regret. (Not even when she told him once in a moment of frustration that he danced like a ‘rigor mortis-afflicted rugby player.’) Maybe she was feeling bad for them that the wedding venue had turned out to be slaughterhouse-adjacent. If that was the case, her regret was unnecessary as far as he was concerned. Patrick was relieved that Elmbridge Manor hadn’t worked out, he had to admit to himself. Even with all the discounts, that venue would have put them into debt and Patrick didn’t want to start his marriage that way. So the dying pigs had been… okay, that had been horrible, but they also had presented him with a reprieve from having to pay for that place.

Still, when Alexis wandered away from the picnic table to talk on the phone to Ted again and David excused himself to go locate some bug spray, Patrick found himself again under the gaze of Moira while her husband sat at the other end of the table and chewed on what appeared to be overly tough bites of pork chop.

“As I resurface from my week of disheartenment, it is occurring to me that it was opprobrious of me to overshadow your and David’s engagement as I did. I apologize, Patrick.” She reached over and patted his hand gently a couple of times, bracelets jangling.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Rose,” he said, suppressing the urge to chuckle at her word choices or worse, to come up with some unusual words of his own to use in response. That was the kind of trolling that he could do with David and even with Alexis, but he was still trying to be on good behavior for his future mother-in-law.

She smiled happily, as if that simple ‘it’s okay’ from him was all it took to alleviate any guilt she’d been carrying. Patrick envied how easily she shed her regret as if it had never been there in the first place. He wondered what it was like, going through life like that. Not lying awake and cringing over something you said ten years ago.

“I’ll confess, I didn’t imagine that our David would ever marry. But John and I are exultant that you are to be his life partner, Patrick,” Moira said. “Right, John?”

Johnny Rose looked up, confused. He obviously hadn’t been paying any attention to what she was saying. “What?”

“I was saying how pleased we are that Patrick and David are to wed.”

“Oh! Oh, yes. Very pleased.” It wasn’t insincere, but David’s father clearly had his mind on something else. He put his knife and fork down. “I should probably clean the grill.”

“Do you want some help, Mr. Rose?” Patrick, said, starting to get up.

“No, Patrick, you stay put. I’ve got it.”

Patrick settled back onto the bench, watching Moira’s face as she watched her husband. 

“He probably thinks I don’t realize,” she said softly.

“Realize what?” 

“That he’s disconsolate over this eleventh hour resurrection of my career,” she replied. “I suppose I should be flattered that my husband doesn’t want to share me with the adoring public.”

Patrick turned and glanced over at Johnny, armed with a grill brush and vigorously scrubbing. Then he turned back to Moira.

“Maybe he just doesn’t want you to have to go through this… roller coaster again.” He’d watched the family (soon to be his own family) carefully over the last week as they worked to navigate Moira’s behavior. He’d lain in bed with David and listened as David told him the story of when his mother’s character had been permanently killed off of _Sunset Bay_ , how she spent almost a month curled up in an admittedly much larger and more luxurious closet, popping pills and weeping, occasionally emerging to perform her grief in front of the family when she felt like they’d been ignoring her for too long. He’d sat with Alexis in the dressing room backstage before their _Cabaret_ performances, watching her organize and reorganize her makeup case while she talked like her mother’s behavior wasn’t a burden on her psyche when clearly it was. He’d also seen the worry and lack of sleep on Johnny Rose’s face. “He’s probably just worried about you,” Patrick added.

“Well, there’s nothing at all to worry about,” Moira said, her voice louder and her vowels stretched to their limit, but then just as quickly her shoulders dropped and when she spoke again, her voice was a little more normal, more subdued. “He’s become content with our life here. He doesn’t understand why I’m not.”

Patrick’s stomach churned at that. The parallel between Johnny and Moira’s relationship and his own wasn’t lost on him. Yes, David seemed mostly content with the life they were building here, but every time some fact of their rural existence made David huff and roll his eyes and complain, a part of Patrick wondered how long that contentment would last. If perhaps they had different visions for where their lives would be in ten or twenty or thirty years. It wasn’t something they’d really talked about much. It was something they definitely needed to talk about more.

“I think as long as you’re happy, Mr. Rose will be happy,” Patrick said, an echo of the words he’d said to David at Elmbridge Manor. “Even if it means that you end up…” He didn’t want to say the words out loud, as if saying them would manifest the fact of them. “Even if you end up moving away.”

Moira patted him on the hand again. “I envy you and David, poised here in the starting blocks with your whole lives ahead of you, your time together to be tallied in decades. Being a team as you run the race of life makes the hurdles easier to gambol over, I assure you.”

Patrick wasn’t sure Moira’s racing analogy made any logical sense, but he appreciated the sentiment. “Yeah.”

David appeared from around the corner of the motel then, a spray bottle of insect repellent in one hand. He’d changed out of the culottes that Patrick had initially mistaken for a skirt (and his attraction to David in a skirt was definitely something they would need to revisit later) and into jeans, probably to protect himself more effectively from bugs. The sun was starting to drop in the sky, the onset of evening giving everything a golden-red glow.

“Hey,” Patrick said, reaching out for David’s free hand. “Need me to spray that on for you?”

“No, I’m good,” David said, leaning over and kissing the top of Patrick’s head. It was an almost unbearably sweet gesture. “I brought this for you. I know how much mosquitoes adore you.”

“As much as you do?” Patrick said, taking the bug spray as Moira got up and tottered across the grass on her 5-inch heels toward her husband at the grill.

“Mmm, possibly, and I’m very jealous,” David said, giving Patrick an eye-crinkling smile. He’d been giving Patrick more and more of those smiles over the last several months, as if somewhere between I-love-you and easiest-decision-of-my-life, the muscles in David’s face that suppressed his smiles had decided to take a succession of long-deserved naps.

“How jealous though?” Patrick asked, pulling David down onto the bench beside him.

David straddled the bench seat and then leaned close and kissed him, his smile drawing together as his lips pressed against Patrick’s. Out of the corner of his eye as he pulled away from David, Patrick could see Johnny and Moira kissing too. 

“It’s not just because Alexis is your sister, you know,” Patrick said.

David frowned. “What?”

“The reason it’s important for her to be at our wedding. It’s not just because she’s your sister, although obviously that’s important. It’s also because she’s been there for us from the beginning. She was the first person you told that we kissed.”

Rolling his eyes, David settled his ringed fingers onto Patrick’s thigh. “That’s because we shared a tiny living space and she always notices when there’s something going on with me.”

“And she’s always rooted for us.” Patrick recalled several talks he’d had with Alexis in the early months of their relationship, while he was ostensibly helping her with her Elmdale College classes. Those conversations had helped him understand better what it meant to love David. It’s possible that without them, he and David may not have made it to this point. “ _I_ need her to be there. It wouldn’t feel right to me, getting married without Alexis there.”

David’s hand moved up and down Patrick’s leg. “I guess… it wouldn’t feel right to me either,” he said grudgingly. “But don’t tell her I said that,” David whispered quickly as Alexis rejoined them at the table with Stevie at her side and a couple of bottles of wine in hand.

Patrick turned and mimicked David’s position on the bench so that he could lean back against David’s chest, letting his fiancé support his weight. He closed his eyes against the setting sun, the warmth of it on his face. Whatever the future held for any of them, at that moment he felt like all of them were invincible, held upright by the sheer force of their love for each other to face it head-on.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [tumblr](https://unfolded73.tumblr.com/)


End file.
